The planning committee for the 2016 Southeast Educational Data Symposium invites presentation and workshop proposals for a one-day conference at Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA) on the use of data to promote teaching, learning, and student success.

Symposium Abstract

Analytics are increasingly indispensable to student success efforts in higher education. Colleges and universities are collecting and exploring historical data to observe past trends in student behavior and are building predictive models to identify at-risk students. They are developing new interventions designed to increase graduation rates and learning outcome achievement. They are using statistical methods to measure and evaluate intervention effectiveness. Progress is being made in each of these three domains: predictive analytics, interventions, and evaluation. All too often, however, work being done in each of these three domains is done in isolation. There are researchers, practitioners, and evaluators. Where the real opportunity lies is in viewing analytics, intervention, and evaluation as necessary stages in a single and continuous cycle of improvement and innovation.

The theme of this year’s Southeast Educational Data Symposium is “Closing the Loop.” By considering data, intervention, and evaluation together as part of a common conversation with the common goal of enhancing student outcomes, we can make analytics more actionable at every point in the student success life-cycle.

Topics

The symposium planning committee invites brief abstracts for presentations and workshops about the use of data in educational contexts to improve student success (however that may be defined). We are particularly interested in presentations with an emphasis on bringing together multiple stages in the student data and evaluation life cycle and, in line with the values of the Southeast Educational Data Society, we strongly encourage proposals with an emphasis on action.

Possible themes may include (but are not limited to):

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

Student Success and Retention

Embedded Analytics

Predicting Student Achievement

Intervention Measurement and Evaluation

Social Network Analysis

Ethics and Privacy

Data Governance

Analytics and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Tying Analytics to Action

Broader Research Questions

Closing the Loop in Data Analytics

Abstracts will be assessed and accepted by the conference planning committee based on relevance, quality, and panel-fit.

Audience and Tracks

The PRACTITIONER TRACK will be specially designed to meet the needs of instructors and instructional designers with a strong interest in leveraging learning data in order to optimize their learning environments.

The ADMINISTRATOR TRACK will be oriented toward discussions of how institutional data can be put to work to understand at-risk student populations, and to develop effective and evidence-based interventions. Presentations and activities in this track will focus on how data can inform the creation of scalable student success initiatives, but also on issues like data governance and privacy. Department chairs, Deans, Provosts, and CIOs will be most likely to benefit from this track.

Submission Types & Formats

PRESENTATIONS. Presenters will be asked to present for a maximum of 15 minutes on their current work in the field of learning analytics. Each session will include 3 similarly-themed presentations, followed by an opportunity for open Q&A and discussion. Those interested in presenting are asked to submit a brief abstract (250 words or less) to seeds2016@edudatasociety.org. Please note that presentations may be professionally recorded and/or streamed live.

WORKSHOPS. The goal of workshops will be to teach symposium participants new skills that will empower them to be more effective in the use of educational data that they have at their disposal. Workshops may be 2 or 4 hours in duration. They should make use of real, de-identified data and aim to facilitate insights and discoveries on the part of participants that will be shared on the afternoon of the second day of the conference. Event organizers will work with workshop facilitators to ensure that necessary technology and materials are available. Those interested in facilitating a workshop are asked to submit a brief abstract (250 words or less) to seeds2016@edudatasociety.org.